


The Five Times Alec Wrestled the Angel

by aimmyarrowshigh



Category: Mortal Instruments Series - Cassandra Clare
Genre: 5 Times, Canon Compliant, Closeted Character, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Religious Imagery & Symbolism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-04
Updated: 2011-01-04
Packaged: 2017-12-12 17:37:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/814188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aimmyarrowshigh/pseuds/aimmyarrowshigh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Angel was a beautiful man, and He made Alec feel very, very small.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Five Times Alec Wrestled the Angel

**Author's Note:**

> **Disclaimer** : I don't own anything. All characters, settings, and proprietary language are owned by the author of the work from which this is derived. Additionally, Part #002 is based in part off one of the shorter monologues in Tony Kushner's _Angels in America_. 
> 
> ORIGINALLY POSTED [HERE](http://aimmyarrowshigh.livejournal.com/26165.html) on 4 January 2011.

** The Five Times Alec Wrestled the Angel **

**  
_001._   
**

When Alec was six years old, he first began to care about the Angel. Not that he didn’t care before; he was born to care about the Angel, he was bred to care about nothing but serving the Angel. But when he was six years old – really, still such a little boy – he began to pore over the books he couldn’t quite read in the Institute’s library, studying anything with the image of Raziel rising from Lake Lyn.

The Angel was pure, he knew. And good. The Angel gave Jonathan Shadowhunter the tools he would need to rid the world of demons. Of badness.

Alec thought the Angel was beautiful. He was enamored with the way the Angel’s face seemed to hold every kind of light in its planes; the way His golden eyes regarded Jonathan Shadowhunter before Him: pitying, and kind. 

The Angel was a beautiful man, and dark-haired, blue-eyed Jonathan Shadowhunter looked so small in His wake. _That’s me_ , Alec always thought. _I’m a Shadowhunter._

The Angel was a beautiful man, and He made Alec feel very, very small.

**_002._ **

Alec liked Hodge Starkweather well enough as a tutor. He liked learning about the world _he_ would grow up to protect. It made him feel bigger to know that he was working for the Angel; stronger, and braver. 

Under Hodge’s tutelage, Alec learned about the importance of holy emblems: they ward off vampires, they protect us from demons. Faith helped to defeat the bad things, the slimy, wormy, toothy things that crawled in the dark. 

Demons could hide in anything, Alec learned early. Could hide in any _one_.

He didn’t quite like learning about demons. Oh, he knew it was important: oni and Behemoth and wretched Forsaken; lesser demons and Greater Demons. It would be his job to help rid the world of them when he was older, and that was not something Alec took lightly. Alec understood the grave importance of keeping himself free of the bad things. With Hodge almost-tenderly guiding his hand, he learned to draw runes for all the good things – bravery, strength, and painlessness. _Good_ things. Runes for the good things could be drawn onto the bodies of Shadowhunters, and only Shadowhunter skin could bear them.

Good things, like the runes, were hallowed gifts from his beloved Angel. 

Hodge noticed that Alec liked studying the story of Raziel and Jonathan Shadowhunter and the Mortal Instruments, so he asked if Alec might like to read some of the Mundanes’ stories about the angels. 

_After all_ , Hodge had said, pressing an illustrated Bible into Alec’s sweaty hands, _it’s the Mundanes the Angel charged us to protect._

Alec didn’t like their stories at all. Oh, their angels were still beautiful men, all tousled pale hair and pale ridges of heavenly muscle. But their eyes, _oh_ –

These angels’ eyes were sharp and judging. 

Alec’s young heart hurt when he took in the dark painting of Jacob wrestling the Angel. Jacob was young and strong – dark-haired and blue-eyed like Jonathan Shadowhunter; it could have been the same man – and the Angel, Alec was certain, was none other than Raziel. His white wings looked like Alec’s parents’ Seraph blades, curved and dangerous behind him, as he crouched, locked forever in combat with small Jacob.

Even in the painting, the fight was unfair. The Angel was perfect and the Angel was not human, and it held nothing back. So how could anyone human – and even Shadowhunters were still human – win? What kind of a fight was that? It wasn’t just. 

In Alec’s world, losing meant your soul thrown down in the dust, your heart torn out from the Angel’s. Shadowhunters had always to win. Shadowhunters had _always_ to triumph over all bad things.

But young Alec looked at the sharp, hard, fighting planes of the Angel’s face, and his lithe, strong, eternal muscles, and he looked at Jacob: tired, dark-haired, blue-eyed, and _human_. He loved the Angel, it was clear in the painting. Jacob, like Jonathan Shadowhunter and like Alec himself, loved the Angel.

But still: he would never not lose.

**_003._ **

Alec Lightwood was eleven years old the first time he saw Jonathan Wayland. His mother had told him that the orphaned son of their good friend was coming to live with them at the Institute and that he was about Alec’s age, and that was exciting. Isabelle was alright, but she was so little, and she was a _girl_.

Alec felt fairly ambiguous about girls. 

He got the feeling, whenever he ventured into the Mundane streets – maybe to get food, maybe to buy books, maybe to run his hands over the gates of the city’s churches – that he wasn’t supposed to be so ambiguous still about girls. But all the same, it didn’t bother him much. He wasn’t Mundane, he was a Shadowhunter. He had bigger things to worry about than girls.

He had the Angel.

So Alec was sitting in the hall, reading his Bible, pretending not to stare at the painting of wrestling Jacob, when Jonathan Wayland arrived.

Alec’s heart hitched tight in his chest when he saw Jonathan standing across the hall, across the mosaic of Raziel rising from Lake Lyn – 

Jonathan had a small wooden Shadowhunter doll clutched in one hand and a cream-white stele in the other. He had tousled pale hair and luminous golden eyes, and he stared at Alec with pitying, sharp silence.

**_004._ **

When Alec and Jace – Jonathan was Jace now, and it gave Alec a silly sort of relief – were sixteen and fifteen, respectively, Jace proposed they spend a day exploring the Mundane city. Alec jumped up so quickly to join him that Jace looked surprised, and Alec was so embarrassed he wished he could sink into the floor.

His heart still thumped wildly whenever Jace walked into the room. Jace no longer stared silently – _wouldn’t even if you paid him_ , Alec thought wryly, _no matter how much you may want him to sometimes_ – but he still looked like the Angel, all white and gold and lithe and strong and virile and beautiful so, so _good_ and it made Alec, dark-haired and blue-eyed, feel so, so _bad_.

He knew, from reading his Mundane Bible, that what he felt for Jace was not of the Angel. The Shadowhunters didn’t follow the stories in the Mundane Bible, and were not supposed to believe in them, not really. They shared hallowed ground because it was true and blessed, but what Shadowhunters could see and what Mundanes wanted to believe were two entirely different worldviews. All the same, Alec had read the story of Sodom and Gomorrah in his Bible, and seen the pictures – horrible paintings that scorched his eyes like demon toxin and poisoned his blood – and he knew, in the darkest place of his heart where he hid the things he didn’t like to think about, that he needed, as a Shadowhunter, to fight certain bad things that lurked inside him. Alec Lightwood, Shadowhunter, needed to fight his demon.

But he jumped up when Jace asked him if he wanted to explore the city, and together they headed out onto the street. Alec admired Jace for many things, not least of which was the way he stood, the way he walked. Jace was shorter than Alec, but he walked taller. Prouder. He was young, still, and he looked it, like every human boy does at fifteen – a little long in the bones, a little narrow in the hips. But his lips always quirked on the edge of a mischievous smirk, his golden eyes flashed like he saw everyone naked even when they were clothed, his arms and legs and shoulders and everywhere else was muscled and and strong and fine.

Jace was a beautiful man, and he made Alec feel very, very small.

They were walking down a street that smelled like fried dough and acrid smoke and painfully spicy peppers and cat pee – every alley in every world, really, smelled like cat pee – when Jace saw the tattooists’ window. He pointed it out to Alec, and the two boys ran across the street to look at the designs in the window. 

_Would you ever get a tattoo?_ Alec asked Jace, staring wide-eyed at the art being inked on pale, pink Mundane skin.

 _We get Marks_ , Jace laughed, _And you’re asking if I’d ever get a tattoo?_

Alec felt foolish. _Marks are different. Tattoos are just… pretty._

 _Pretty_. What kind of a man uses the word ‘pretty’ to describe tattoos? Tattoos were supposed to be tough, Alec thought. And so were men. So were Shadowhunters.

But Jace just smiled at him, one of the rare smiles that he seemed to reserve for when Alec needed it most. It was a smile that could melt glaciers and shine diamonds. _Yeah, I’d get a tattoo. Pick one out and I’ll get it._

Alec’s eyes widened. “Really?”

Jace’s smile turned into a roguish smirk and he shrugged. _Why not?_

Alec looked carefully over all the designs in the window, taking his decision seriously. Alec was a serious boy; he took everything very seriously. Tribal markings and Japanese characters were too similar to Marks. Dragons and phoenixes looked too demon for Jace’s angel-white and gold. A heart –

Alec didn’t want to see Jace wearing a heart bearing anyone else’s name. And there was no way Jace would ever –

And then he saw it. Fearsome and beautiful: an angel, wings spread and proud and trailing feathers down the skin of Jace’s long, lean back…

“That one,” Alec said, pointing to the ruffle-feathered angel. His hand came to the small of Jace’s back without thinking; they were brothers, they were _parabatai_ , in their world, casual touch was just that – casual.

But Alec had forgotten they were not in their own world.

It came whizzing out of nowhere – a tiny rock, just a pebble – and stung where it struck the side of Alec’s face, near his eye.

He could deal with that. Apply a rune, heal, move on. That was the Shadowhunter way.

But the rock-thrower, paused straddling his bicycle a few yards away, glared at Alec as darkly as any demon’s dead eyes ever had, and hissed one word – just one word to break Alec forever – before putting his feet back on the pedals and coasting away.

“ _Queer._ ”

Jace was already rolling up his black sleeves and halfway down the block, chasing the bicycle with righteous fire in his golden eyes when Alec caught him, red Shadowhunter blood dripping into his blue eye. _It’s not – Jace, let it go. Please. He’s just a Mundane. It’s fine._

Jace’s hands shook, but were tender as he drew a healing rune on Alec’s face. His warm breath tickled Alec’s cheek as he worked and blew the fringe of Alec’s dark hair across his brow. The slight, stinging pain of the cut stopped immediately, healed by the Marks that were gifts from the Angel to the Shadowhunters.

But all the way back to the Institute, Jace grumbling and flexing his fists – aching for a fight, any excuse to hurt someone – beside him all the way, Alec’s heart burned dully with every shamed beat, as though he had been doused with acidic, mucousy black ichor. 

**_005._ **

Alec was dreaming.

The Marks had been stripped from his skin. His clothing had been stripped from his body. He stood, small and afraid and naked, _utterly_ naked, awaiting his fate –

And the Angel descended, a beautiful white-and-gold man with luminous, sharp eyes, beautiful and long and bare, and challenged him to wrestle for the right to drink from the Mortal Cup, challenged him to win back his strength as a Shadowhunter.

Being a Shadowhunter was all Alec had ever known, and he had to accept the fight. The Angel folded his wings behind his lean back, and Alec saw that Raziel had Jace’s face, down to the sinful mouth with a single smile left on it.

And then the Angel was on him, their bodies locked together skin-against-skin, perfect and terrible, writhing together wet on the ground. Alec felt a sharp sting at the corner of his eye, and realized the Angel had kissed him there. He grappled with Jace the Angel, pushed him down and wrapped his arms around him, moving hard and fast and Jace’s face changed, pitying and judging.

 _Why are you doing this to me?_ Alec asked the Angel as its wings unfurled, great white wings that made Alec realize the tininess of his own humanity. _Why do you challenge me to fight you like this, night after night after night? I’m a good Shadowhunter. I try so hard to keep out the bad things…_

The Angel smiled a smile to melt glaciers and shine diamonds. His Marked hand twisted Alec’s hip and he took Alec down into the lapping water at the shore of Lake Lyn, water as poisonous to a Shadowhunter as demon toxin. 

_You challenge yourself to this struggle_ , the Angel Jace said. _This is your own struggle, Alec Lightwood. And you yourself have made it fierce. Fierce… and unfair._

Alec collapsed in the mirror water of Lake Lyn, dark hair falling into his blue eyes as the Angel’s wings folded around him like a white shroud – the Shadowhunter color of mourning. _How can I win?_

And the wings melted around him, leaving only Jace there, Marked and battle-ready as ever, righteous and blazing with holy fire and teenage perfection in his bare skin. Even in dreams, Alec’s heart raced as Jace helped him drink from the Mortal Cup, drew runes back on Alec’s Shadowhunter skin, kissing and caressing and touching him all the while –

And then Alec saw that Jace still had small wings, the stubs of wings, the _memory_ of wings, in his skin and he touched them, the heavenly matter the Angel made visible only to good Shadowhunters.

The dream always ended here, with Jace the Angel in his lap, white wings about to sprout forth and carry him away. And just before he left, the gold-and-white Angel touched Alec’s skin and challenged, just as Jace _would_ , infuriating as he was:

_Admit that there is no winning. And just don’t lose._

 

   
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